The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it would not hear a challenge to Florida’s unique-in-the-nation ban on adoptions by gays, sidestepping a case that could have thrust the court into a bitter culture war.

Without comment or published dissent, the court declined a petition from four gay foster parents and their foster children, who argued that the Florida law, adopted in 1977, violates constitutional rights the Supreme Court recognized when it struck down Texas’s ban on same-sex sodomy in the 2003 case Lawrence v. Texas.

The court’s action leaves in place a 2 to 1 ruling last year by the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which upheld the Florida law as a rational expression of the state legislature’s view that households headed by married heterosexuals are best for children.

It’s worth remembering that the Supreme Court initially didn’t want to hear the Lawrence sodomy case only later to reverse course when Justice Thomas wouldn’t stop whining and holding his breath and lying on the floor kicking his heels.